Volume leveling
- Thread starter ozzy
- Start date
I can't offer a real solution, apart from to say that my amp has a huge Settings menu and within these settings is one that offers "Replay-gain" offering a choice of Track Gain, Album Gain and Smart Gain. To tell the truth, I'm far from convinced it makes any difference which of these is chosen, or Disabled. Whichever setting is chosen, some albums are far louder than others and there's no mention of this potentially useful feature in the Owner's Manual. No problem if playing an entire album at a high recorded volume followed by a low-recorded one as the physical volume control only needs adjustment every hour or so! It would be great if it actually worked though!
Jim Smith
Member
I know this is not the answer you are seeking, but over the years I have learned what the offset for each album is, and I have recorded them into my system log. When the album starts, I have already adjusted the offset, up or down.
To date, I've not encountered any automatic level adjust - against a known reference - that I wanted to use.
Thank God for remote volume controls!
Good luck and keep us posted!!!
To date, I've not encountered any automatic level adjust - against a known reference - that I wanted to use.
Thank God for remote volume controls!
Good luck and keep us posted!!!
BlueFox
New member
I think of this every time I play my X1. I have various playlists, and 99% of the time I play them on random shuffle. For whatever reason, some albums are recorded at a lower volume so a song's volume needs to be increased when played. Then the next song plays and the volume needs to be decreased. Not sure if it would be possible for Lumin to automatically adjust the volume.
crwilli
Active member
As a data point, I have tried setting ROON to level the different gains of tracks. It works but often times sounds like crap. Strong digital sharpness and harsh sounds occur. Now I just use my volume control.
Earlier I wrote this:
my amp has a huge Settings menu and within these settings is one that offers "Replay-gain" offering a choice of Track Gain, Album Gain and Smart Gain. To tell the truth, I'm far from convinced it makes any difference which of these is chosen, or Disabled. Whichever setting is chosen, some albums are far louder than others
Since then I've asked NAD about this feature - here's their response:
Replay-Gain is a hidden metadata value that can help to adjust over volume levels of tracks on an album. These are often included with digital downloads. These settings are dependant on the metadata data and any music without this info will not produce any noticeable effects. It is usually best to leave this setting disabled.
Well, it seems that the record producers CAN embed adjustment information into their metadata (presumably there's an industry agreed standard) but most don't. The last sentence reveals the true situation - we are wasting our time trying to find the solution - at least until most albums are coded with an indication of their relative recorded volume level. Maybe the streaming services could do this work, or even adjust the levels of high and low level recordings before they send it to us. Wishful thinking!
my amp has a huge Settings menu and within these settings is one that offers "Replay-gain" offering a choice of Track Gain, Album Gain and Smart Gain. To tell the truth, I'm far from convinced it makes any difference which of these is chosen, or Disabled. Whichever setting is chosen, some albums are far louder than others
Since then I've asked NAD about this feature - here's their response:
Replay-Gain is a hidden metadata value that can help to adjust over volume levels of tracks on an album. These are often included with digital downloads. These settings are dependant on the metadata data and any music without this info will not produce any noticeable effects. It is usually best to leave this setting disabled.
Well, it seems that the record producers CAN embed adjustment information into their metadata (presumably there's an industry agreed standard) but most don't. The last sentence reveals the true situation - we are wasting our time trying to find the solution - at least until most albums are coded with an indication of their relative recorded volume level. Maybe the streaming services could do this work, or even adjust the levels of high and low level recordings before they send it to us. Wishful thinking!
You don't need to rely on the producers for volume leveling metadata if you use Roon.
Roon does it by analyzing all your albums.
I only used Roon for a 1 month trial, but I didn't notice that feature. Presumably it's not automatically done and I guess this additional layer of processing comes at a small sound quality cost. How does one go about asking Roon to apply it and does it do the same with streamed music from Qobuz, etc? Most importantly - does it actually work effectively? Thanks
As an interested party, having some technical experience in cloud streaming, and knowing just enough to be dangerous, what is necessary could be accomplished 2 ways:
1) rely on track (relative gain) metadata, which as already mentioned above is not always available. Even if available, it might be difficult to correlate this metadata into a useful, consistent metric. Streaming services, could if they wanted to, always make this metadata available and usable, but it would be expensive for them to do. IIRC, spotify had/has an option to "normalize" their tracks, not sure how they accomplish this.
2) Processing each track locally, and computing a relative gain for each (computing your own relative gain). This is rather compute intensive, and to do so you need access to the entire track.
Within the context of a Lumin device, they don't always have access to the entire track before it is played, as it is likely streamed. You could delay playback until you've had a chance to pre-scan the track, but this would prove an unacceptable delay as network speed, device storage and compute power come into play.
A potential relative gain could be calculated as a track is played the first time, and then cached and reused on subsequent playbacks, but it could be a rather confusing user experience (eg - a track plays at 60db the first time and 70db subsequently; if unaware it'd be confusing). It would require some storage on the device for the cache (which may or may not be available). It would also obviously require opting in to Leedh.
In short, this is a difficult proposition, and I don't think we'll be seeing this in Lumin devices.
1) rely on track (relative gain) metadata, which as already mentioned above is not always available. Even if available, it might be difficult to correlate this metadata into a useful, consistent metric. Streaming services, could if they wanted to, always make this metadata available and usable, but it would be expensive for them to do. IIRC, spotify had/has an option to "normalize" their tracks, not sure how they accomplish this.
2) Processing each track locally, and computing a relative gain for each (computing your own relative gain). This is rather compute intensive, and to do so you need access to the entire track.
Within the context of a Lumin device, they don't always have access to the entire track before it is played, as it is likely streamed. You could delay playback until you've had a chance to pre-scan the track, but this would prove an unacceptable delay as network speed, device storage and compute power come into play.
A potential relative gain could be calculated as a track is played the first time, and then cached and reused on subsequent playbacks, but it could be a rather confusing user experience (eg - a track plays at 60db the first time and 70db subsequently; if unaware it'd be confusing). It would require some storage on the device for the cache (which may or may not be available). It would also obviously require opting in to Leedh.
In short, this is a difficult proposition, and I don't think we'll be seeing this in Lumin devices.
mep
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2013
- Messages
- 5,045
Is it a really a huge problem to use your remote to adjust the volume when each album starts or is this a different problem of having music playing in the background while you are doing something else and you have to stop what you were doing to make a volume adjustment?
mep
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2013
- Messages
- 5,045
There is a genius on World Boxing Federation that claims there is only one correct volume level for each room. He calls his genius discovery "RRV." He claims that once you find the RRV for your room, you never touch the volume control again because every song will play at the perfect level for your room.
Of course it's all total BS.
Of course it's all total BS.
There is not much you need to do, other than setting the volume leveling option properly.
Roon supports volume leveling with Qobuz content too, see this release note:
Roon 1.7 (Build 571) is Live! - Software Release Notes - Roon Labs Community
As for whether it works effectively, you'll need to search for the comments in Roon forum.